This the first post on Dawn Blitz; I’ll do a second at the conclusion of the exercises, or if something really interesting comes up. – KM I made a conscious decision to not attend Dawn Blitz 2013. I’ve covered a U.S. – Japanese exercise at Camp Pendleton before, and I had been frustrated by the...

One of the many justifications that the Japanese government referred to in revising Japan’s weapons export restrictions was the potential to assist nations being rebuilt after a conflict or humanitarian disaster. Previously the SDF was unable to leave behind any heavy machinery or other equipment that may have been useful to such nations. Today, the...

Japan has announced a series of initiatives to bolster the Self Defense Forces’ ability to respond to new and potential threats. The initiatives span from cyber to amphibious warfare and fill gaps in existing capability. TV Asahi has broken the news that the Self Defense Forces plan on buying four U.S.-made AAV-7 amphibious assault vehicles...

There have been three notable pieces of news regarding SDF deployments in the past week: Tornado Relief A tornado struck the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, as well as other locations in Ibaraki and Tochigi on Sunday May 6th, damaging around 2000 buildings with surprisingly only one death (a 14 year old boy) and over...

Remember back in January when we showed you a video of the first mass production Type-10 tank being induced into the Fuji School of Armor? Well, Shukan Shincho reported in their February 2nd issue that the ceremony was actually hit by a stroke of bad luck: the tank was to be shown off in a demonstration, but on January 9th, the day before the initiation ceremony, a malfunction was discovered in the the protection circuit of the power system forcing the GSDF to cancel the demonstration. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the manufacturer, stated that they were unable to comment on the issue, but the GSDF Public Affairs Office announced that it was a program error, and that repair work was completed on January 22nd.

A bad start for all involved, and as the Shukan Shincho wrote: “You cannot be helped for feeling it’s had bad luck from the beginning.”

From Jijion January 10th, we have this wonderful video of the initiation ceremony of the first mass production model of the Type-10 tank into the GSDF’s armor training unit at the GSDF Fuji School in Shizuoka Prefecture, whose open day I attended last year.

Until this point, the Type-10s in use at the school have been experimental production models. The mass production model now entering service with the school is the product of several changes and upgrades on the experimental models.

Once the school has received its complement of tanks, expect to see their use extending into the GSDF’s armored units for general service, bringing a much-needed modern light-weight battle tank to fill the gaps caused by the restrictions of the use of the Type-90 outside Hokkaido.